Current Events > Will Elden Ring have a big impact on future AAA games?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It may have been nitpicked examples but there seemed to be a lot of game designers on social media angry about this game's design philosophy

No.

I hope it impacts every horse in gaming so they're able to double jump.

They were taught to appeal to the widest audience possible

and just got proven wrong

Absolutely, in the same way you're seeing more games take after BotW's influence. It'll take a few years for that to filter through, though.

The Souls franchise already has a huge impact on modern gaming

Sictis posted...

The Souls franchise already had a huge impact on modern gaming

Examples?

It doesn't do anything that hasn't been done already lol

No. I expect a lot of copycats but the souls franchise is the result of a singular vision driven by an organized studio that's building on top of past successes with an experienced staff that is being left to their own devices. That combination of things is rare to begin with, but effectively impossible to maintain in this modern world of publisher driven titles.

Doe posted...

Examples?

There's like an entire genre of copycats that only exist because of Demons/Dark Souls, and then a bunch of unrelated genres took its death mechanic like Hollow Knight for example. Salt & Sanctuary, Nioh, Mortal Shell, The Surge, and Code Vein off the top of my head. I don't like Souls clones aside from Nioh 1 and 2, so I don't look at the genre all too often.

I don't think so, Elden Ring really doesn't do anything new for Souls genre, just does it all on a bigger scale and more of it as once (and has some balance and pacing problems because of this, to a degree the previous games didn't have). The design philosphy itself that sections of the industry have been aping since Dark Souls 1 remains the same.

In short, I see the shift from Dark Souls 3 to Elden Ring as barely anything at all compared to what the shift from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild did.

I don't know. I don't think developers can get themselves to do what Elden Ring did.

It's nice to have a AAA game that isn't riddled with microtransactions

Megaman50100 posted...

I don't think so, Elden Ring really doesn't do anything new for Souls genre, just does it all on a bigger scale and more of it as once (and has some balance and pacing problems because of this, to a degree the previous games didn't have). The design philosphy itself that sections of the industry have been aping since Dark Souls 1 remains the same.

In short, I see the shift from Dark Souls 3 to Elden Ring as barely anything at all compared to what the shift from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild did.

While the game itself is really just an evolution of Dark souls 3 with some open world added, I think what the TC was getting at is less it being revolutionary by itself and more the impact that its massive commercial success will have when compared to some of the more recent cookie cutter AAA fare. It's more about how people will respond to seeing a soul's game with 700,000 concurrent people on steam next to the most recent battlefield having only a few thousand, or next to any of the live service games that have or are crashing and failing like Babylon's Fall, or next to paid games trying to take advantage of free to play cash grab mechanics like chocobo gp.

Edit: summarized with a meme...
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/2/6/AABJX0AADCcK.jpg

Hopefully the UI stuff is something other studios take away. Love how minimalist it is.

Apart from that while I'm loving Elden Ring I'm not sure that it breaks new ground on much. It's a (very well made) combination and refinement of a bunch of game design choices and tropes that have been around for a long time already.

I do see this along with games like Horizon, Fallen Order, Gof of War, Spider-Man, BotW, etc as evidence that there's still a huge demand for well made singleplayer games.

And hopefully that's a thing studios take away from this

Absolutely. And I say this as someone who works in the games industry.

Doe posted...

Examples?

They created a whole genre called souls-like. Are you kidding me?

Doe posted...

Examples?

There's a ton of copy cat games. Stranger of Paradise and that shooting tree game comes into my mind immediately.

Doe posted...

Examples?

https://youtu.be/9aiTXXifbwE?t=571